Sound damping materials have been used in a variety of applications and industries, including the automotive industry. Oftentimes, articles that have been damped for sound include some type of viscoelastic material applied to a vibratory article, such as an automotive oil pan. The viscoelastic material absorbs and dissipates the vibrational energy generated by the article by converting mechanical energy associated with the vibrations into thermal energy that is dispersed within the sound damping material layer, and thus reduces the noise associated therewith. There are several different structures commonly used for sound damping purposes, including: free-layer structures, constrained-layer structures and laminates.
Free-layer structures are structures where a sound damping viscoelastic material by itself is applied to the surface of a vibratory article. In such an arrangement, vibratory or acoustical energy created by a noise or vibration source on one side of the article is dissipated in the adjacent viscoelastic layer so that it is not transmitted to the other side of the structure. In the case of constrained-layer structures, the sound damping viscoelastic material acts as an adhesive and is sandwiched between the vibratory article and an additional rigid constraining layer. The vibration damping is generally due to relative movement between the vibratory article and the rigid constraining layer which causes a shearing movement in the viscoelastic material. The shearing movement translates the vibrational energy into heat energy which is then dissipated through the rigid constraining layers. Sound damping laminates generally perform much in the same way as constrained-layer structures, however the vibratory article includes a pair of thin constraining layers and a viscoelastic material.
In addition to their vibration-reducing attributes, sound damping structures like those mentioned above can also exhibit a number of other desirable performance characteristics. For instance, sound damping structures have been known to exhibit certain structural and thermal-resistance characteristics that are desirable for a variety of applications.